COMPOSERS: Delibes
LABELS: BBC
PERFORMER: Royal Ballet
CATALOGUE NO: DVD 1024 ................#D15
New technology doesn't always make for better viewing, at least not where dance is concerned. Even though DVD may produce a better class of image for the TV screen, it can't alter the fact that the screen remains a screen, rather than a three-dimensional space, and that the images we see are only miniature versions of the stage event.
We still have a long way to go before the experience of watching dance in our sitting rooms is remotely comparable to seeing it live.
The toy theme continues with two different versions of COPPELIA -though neither of these, unfortunately, is ideal.
The Royal Ballet's revival of Ninette de Valois's 1954 production (BBC]) has the bonus of Osbert Lancaster's witty designs and some beautiful incidental choreography, but it lacks dtamatic focus (Leanne Benjamin and Carlos Acosta perform the sparring lovers, Swanilda and Franz).
The Kirov's version by Oleg Vinogradov is a more compressed but somewhat heavy-handed staging, with a slightly disappointing cast led by Inna Shapchits and Mikhail Xavialov.